Frostburg mining journal. [volume] (Frostburg, Md.) 1871-1913, 1887-10-29

THE JOURNAL has no authority,
immediate or remote, to speak for the
companies, singly or collectively,
concerning the matter of "dockage"
condemned in the report of the last
grand jury.
1t knows only this-that were it in
the place of the Potomac coal compa-
ny it would at all hazards expose
without reserve the scheme which
brought that company unjustly under
the censure of the grand inquest.
1t would at least show up
l, That the system of "dockage"
is the only Immediately available
method to secure marketable coal
with opportune certainty.
l, That in the uniform shipment
of such coal the miner is as much
interested as the company, more par
ticularly the honest, careful, consci-
entious miner.
3, That "dockage" in some form or
other is the penalty for all delinquen-
cies in all commercial exchanges the
world over.
4, That the Potomac and other
companies whose employees compel
them to protect themselves in part,
pay nearly ecery month for digging
more coal than they haze to sell!
We believe the last point can be
established by both oral testimony
and the records, which, in the judg-
ment of unbiased people, ought to be
held as an offset against the evidence
of those whose conscience has con-
tracted gangrene in their fierce strug-
giles with the ghost of bad air, the
phantom of incorrect weight, and the
little new born spook of semi-monthly
pays.
And disinterested people, some of
whom. doubtless, ought to get on the
next grand jury, should ENJOY an
opportunity to sift this business for
about day, or until the gauzy
screen drops out of the sitter.
COMPLAINT is made that boys are worked
on roads and receive the pay of men, and
that the roads do not receive tho amount of
work they should for the amount of money
appropriated. Jury Report.
Is that not the rule to be observed
under the coming regime? Is not
all labor to be elevated horizontally :?
Ia not the young to have as much
wages as the old, the weak as much
as the strong, the small as much as
the big, the female as much as the
male, the ignorant as much as the
learned, matter as much as mind,
the unskilled as much as the skilled,
the poor as much as the rich? Did
not the grand jury reflect that there
, is to be but one favored class in the
society of the future-the population
of the penitentiary? Did the jury
forget that the jailbird element is to
revel in aristocratic idleness in an
era when no convict made goods
shall compete with the fabrics of
honest toll p?
The jury overlooked another con-
sideration, too-that the people who
do the work are to be the sole judges
of the "amount of work" that should
be done for the ''amount of money
appropriated"
1t Is remarkably strange they for
got this point after recommending
an amendment of the mining law
endowing the miners of Potomac
mine with the prerogative of either
altering or repeating the "dockage"
regulation, which prevails there, to
suit their own sweet will.
Perhaps, however, there is some
difference between rights of road
workers and miners that we wot
not of.
But to a gentleman up tree it
appears that what is sauce for the
goose in No. 9 ought to be sance for
the gander in Nos l, 2, 10 and IA.
The Knights of Labor are work
ing a circular embodying the history